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Weber Shandwick is Most Awarded Public Relations Firm at 2016 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity

Monday 27 June, 2016

NEW YORK – Weber Shandwick, one of the world’s leading global communications and engagement firms, was the most awarded public relations firm at the 2016 Cannes Festival of Creativity. Weber Shandwick won a total of six Cannes Lions in Cyber, Health & Wellness, Media and Public Relations. The firm’s Prime unit in Sweden won a Gold PR Lion, Bronze PR Lion, and a Silver Lion each in Cyber and Media for Hemnet “House of Clicks,” in addition to a Silver PR Lion for “Don’t Drink and Dive” with Trygg-Hansa. Weber Shandwick also won a Bronze Lion in Health & Wellness, OTC Oral Medicines for PR with GSK Consumer Health for Excedrin “The Migraine Experience.”

The firm also was credited as the PR agency for an additional 24 Cannes Lions with its clients and agency partners in Creative Data, Cyber, Design, Digital Craft, Direct, Entertainment, Health & Wellness, Innovation, Media, Outdoor, Promo & Activation, and Public Relations:

Save the Children “Children’s Election” led by McCann Madrid, awarded a Bronze Lion in Outdoor

“We are certainly proud of our team and clients for earning top honours at Cannes Lions this year. Even more so, we’re excited by the impact that creativity and strategic engagement is delivering to produce incredible work, not just in the PR category but across disciplines as everything we do becomes more integrated,” said Gail Heimann, President of Weber Shandwick. “Thank you and congratulations to all of our clients and agency partners for the collaboration and teamwork that came together to produce some truly powerful campaigns.”

Jurors, Experts Shape Conversations at Cannes

Four experts from Weber Shandwick were chosen to participate on juries across Cannes Lions categories this year. Valerie Pinto, CEO, India, and Hannes Kerstell, senior partner and executive media director at Prime, were members of the PR Lions jury. Patrick Chaupham, EVP of creative technology strategy, was a member of the Innovation Lions jury. Peter Matheson Gay, executive creative director of Global Health, participated in the Health & Wellness Lions jury and was a speaker for the “Inside the Jury Room: Health & Wellness” panel at Lions Health.

Weber Shandwick also led several conversations during the 2016 Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. Tom Beckman, executive creative director of Prime and Chair of Weber Shandwick’s Global Creative Collective, presented “Hope That Your Client Hates Your Ideas” on institutionalising creativity and why creative agencies should be briefing their clients. The firm also hosted a conversation on the subject of brand immortality, moderated by Ad Age Publisher Josh Golden with Jorn Socquet, Vice President of Marketing at Anheuser-Busch, Raja Rajamannar, CMO of MasterCard, and Matheson Gay.

At Lions Health, President of Global Healthcare Laura Schoen hosted a main stage panel on “The Slippery Slope to Bias” addressing the impact of healthcare bias on patients with Alan M. Blassberg, director and producer of the documentary “Pink & Blue: Colors of Hereditary Cancer,” and Ed Lang, senior director, Genentech, Inc., founding sponsor of The Lung Cancer Project. Chairman Jack Leslie moderated a conversation with client UNICEF, exploring the link between early childhood development and creativity, with Deepa Grover, chief of early childhood development, UNICEF CEE-CIS Regional Office, Sherrie Westin, EVP of global philanthropy at Sesame Workshop, and Al Rice, chief knowledge officer at the Harvard University Center for the Developing Child. Leslie also participated in a panel hosted by client UN Foundation on marketing’s role in advancing the UN Global Goals.